Apple Shows Off Powerpc

Demonstration

Is A Hit During

Computer Event

Apple Computer stole the show on Thursday in Miami Beach with a demonstration of its new PowerPC computers at a two-day computer trade exhibition that continues today.

"This allows Apple to differentiate itself in a very crowded, generic computer marketplace," said Pat Grace, a senior engineer with Apple.

About 300 people listened to Grace speak for nearly two hours about Apple's strategy to use the PowerPC chip to make videoconferencing and voice commands standard features in the Macintosh in coming years.

He will repeat his presentation today at 1 p.m. at the Strictly Business Computer Expo at the Miami Beach Convention Center, between Collins Avenue and Alton Road, opposite the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. Tickets to the event, which features exhibitions by 300 computer related companies, are $10.

"The performance of the machine was unreal," said Rude Fores, a graphic artist from Miami. "I would say there is no comparison."

Apple will need many such responses as it strives to bring the PowerPC into the offices of corporate America. Until now, corporate computer managers have relegated the easy-to-use but relatively expensive Macintosh largely to graphics

The PowerPC was developed at a cost of $1 billion by Apple, Motorola and IBM as a way to advance the state of computing and dilute the power of Microsoft and Intel. The two companies provide the operating software and microprocessors that control more than 90 percent of the world's 150 million personal computers.

"This is probably the biggest product introduction since the Mac was introduced in 1984," Grace said.

IBM is so impressed with PowerPC that it has split its personal computer business into separate competing businesses. One, the IBM PC Co., continues to employ most of the 3,300 people at IBM's lab in Boca Raton, developing computers around Intel's chips.

The Power Personal division, meanwhile, works largely out of Austin, Texas, developing desktop machines around the PowerPC chip.